


gooooo pride!

by allapplesfall



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Established Charlie/Astra, F/F, Fluff, Football | Soccer, National Women's Soccer League, they play soccer and smooch! that's it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: The NWSL finals have arrived, and the Orlando Pride are set to take on the Chicago Red Stars. Astra isnotnervous.Written for the chastra week day 2 prompt: pride!
Relationships: Charlie/Astra Logue
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	gooooo pride!

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to contribute something to chastra week and I miss soccer, so I sat down and cranked this out!

“So,” Charlie says, putting her foot up on the bench. She grins over at Astra. “You nervous?”

Astra rolls her eyes, slipping her shin guards into her socks. “And why would I be nervous?”

Charlie cocks her head. “You _are_ ,” she says, delighted. “You are nervous!”

Astra grits her teeth. “I’m not nervous.”

“Aw, it’s alright!” Charlie gives her shoulder a comforting scrub with her knuckles. “Happens to the best of us.”

“It’s your first finals match as a starter,” says Ava, pulling on her long-sleeved goalkeeper shirt. “I’d be more surprised if you weren’t nervous.”

“I’m _not_ nervous.” Astra’s cheeks have darkened. The set of her lips is mutinous.

“Hey.” Charlie finishes tugging tight the laces on her cleats and drops onto the bench, sitting by her side. She takes one of Astra’s hands. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. You’re gonna kill it, yeah?”

Astra’s eyes drop to their clasped fingers. Her brow furrows slightly.

“C’mon.” Charlie knocks their shoulders together. “We’re your team, Astra. You’re not the only one who’s gonna be out on that field. We’ve got your back.”

“Sure,” Astra says, after a moment. “Well, thanks for the heart to heart, but I don’t need a pep talk. I’m fine.”

Charlie grins. For all of the projected coolness in Astra’s voice, she hasn’t dropped her hand.

In that moment, all Charlie wants to do is push her back against the lockers and snog her till she can’t have a nervous thought in her head, till that fiery intensity comes out to play without the brittle edges of defensiveness. She can’t, because that would just distract both of them from what really is an important match. Besides, Astra hates PDA with a passion.

The team knows they’re together, of course—they ribbed them to hell and back the day they walked into the locker room late after training with their usual tension replaced by Astra’s mussed hair and Charlie’s cocky grin. But Astra doesn’t want anybody beyond the players and the coaches to know. Even in the NWSL, teammates dating makes headlines, and that’s probably the most public PDA can get.

That’s alright by Charlie, even if it does narrow down the snogging opportunities by a fair amount.

“I think Sara should be the nervous one,” Zari Tomaz says wryly. “Logue’s gonna leave corpses out there, and that’s a lot of paperwork.”

“Hey.” Sara looks up from where she sits, flipping through the captain’s clipboard. She points at Astra. “We said light maiming.”

“Light maiming,” Astra concedes, rolling her eyes again. She pulls her hand from Charlie’s and focuses on donning the rest of her kit. “Killjoys.”

Charlie snorts.

“Five minutes till warm-ups,” Ava says. “Mona, can you help me with those keeper drills?”

“Five minutes,” Charlie echoes, as Ava and Mona walk away. The reality of the approaching match sets in, igniting in her chest and waking her up in the best bloody way. Five minutes till they go out to the pitch to face the shrieking whistles and the cheering fans. Five minutes till they get to show the world what a scrappy bunch of underdogs can do.

“We’re going to destroy them,” Astra tells her.

Charlie really fucking hopes so.

-

Their coach subs Charlie back in with only fifteen minutes to spare. It’s been a long, hard slog of a match, both teams playing hard and tight, giving little and getting next to nothing in return. The glowing numbers on the scoreboard confirm the 0-1 they’ve been stuck in since the Red Stars scored in minute twenty-four.

She slaps the hand of the substitute midfielder who relieved her, and takes position near the centerline for Amaya’s goal kick. The ball blurs diagonally out of the box to Zari Tarazi, who chips it up to Nora, who catches it squarely in the chest. It drops to her feet and she passes it into Kendra. Kendra brings it up to half. When she gets closed in by a midfielder from the Red Stars, she boots it across to Charlie.

Charlie drives the ball up the sideline. An opponent white jersey runs to meet her. Charlie flicks the ball up to Sara, their right forward. The defensive wing cuts in, angling to sweep the ball out from under Sara’s feet, but Charlie’s already sprinting past both of them for the give-and-go and Sara passes it up with a confident kick.

Now the green field opens up in front of her, studded with only two defenders and the keeper.

“Ball!” someone calls.

Charlie registers Astra’s voice as the sweeper blazes in. She’s been working double time to compensate for a rookie lineup of defensive mids, and Charlie’s been foiling enough of her attempts to clear the ball upfield to piss her off, so she comes in slightly too hot. Charlie takes advantage of the misjudged timing to drive by with a feint. She gets the rush of adrenaline as the ball responds like quicksilver beneath her feet, and the poor fullback is left hapless, trying to recover. Now Charlie can see Astra’s purple jersey, holding position even with the last in the defensive line, the right wing who’s dropped back to cover center.

Charlie dribbles forward, drawing the defender towards her. Abruptly, she pulls back her leg and crosses. The ball explodes off her instep, hard and fast and low. It streaks across the field at the perfect angle, cutting behind the defender and in front of Astra, just teasing the edge of the goal box. Astra runs in with two strides—bless her beautiful long legs—and settles it with a quick tap. The keeper charges forward to close down her angles, but she’s too late: Astra blasts the ball with her signature killer left foot and it rockets high into the upper right corner of the net.

The crowd roars in approval.

Charlie’s heart leaps. She runs forward and catches Astra in a hug. Sara, who’d been running wide to offer a back pass, and Zari Tomaz and Nora, from midfield, sprint to join them.

“Stop, stop, you idiots,” Astra says, when they’ve all enveloped her in a hug and are clapping her on the back. She’s smiling, though, proud, and no one takes offense to the insult because it’s Astra. “The game hasn’t ended yet.”

She’s right, so they jog back to their positions for the opponent’s kickoff. Before they part, Charlie catches Astra’s hand and squeezes. Astra squeezes back.

“Thanks for the assist,” she says.

Charlie winks. “Let’s do it again.”

The other team, unfortunately, has a vested interest in not letting them do it again. They come back from the kickoff with a renewed fervor, and Charlie spends more time on her own half of the field than she’d like as the play pinballs around between purple and white players. One of the Red Star forwards gets a shot off. Ava makes a beautiful save. Her punt gets intercepted, though, and then the ball’s back on their side.

Amaya comes through. With the powerful, purposeful kick of a defender, she clears the ball two-thirds of the way up the field and directly ahead of Tomaz’s path. Tomaz looks to Astra and Sara, the forwards, but realizes she has an open lane. She takes a shot from twenty yards out, and the goalie has to punch the ball up above the crossbar to make the save.

Charlie and the rest of the offensive lineup jog up into the goal box for the corner kick.

“Nice one, Z!” she says, clapping Zari on the back.

Zari gives her a dry smile. “I’m sweaty,” she complains. “Remind me why I moved to Florida?”

“Let’s finish this,” says Astra, from her other side.

Charlie glances up to the board. Four minutes left on the clock. If they don’t win this play, they’ll be hard-pressed to find another opportunity like this before they have to go into overtime. And this is a final in the Florida heat—nobody wants to go into overtime. She nods.

The three of them split, each taking their positions and immediately attracting a white-shirted player to mark them. Charlie jostles against hers, fighting to stay goalside without fouling.

In the left corner, Sara raises a hand. She takes two steps forward and clips the ball into the air, sending it in an arc set to land somewhere to Charlie’s right. Charlie anticipates, backpedaling, only to see Kendra coming to meet it at a perfect angle. Charlie sidesteps. Kendra takes the ball in the air and blasts it into the goal.

The keeper can’t get a good handle on it from so close and hard, so she’s forced to block it instead of catching it. The ball ricochets up.

Charlie’s feet move before she registers intention. With a jump and the forward snap of her upper body, she heads the ball.

The net yanks taut. The keeper falls.

At first, she doesn’t understand quite what’s happened. Then, with all the suddenness of an aux plugging into a jack, the noise of the crowd blares around her. She hears the cheers of her teammates and feels their hot, sweaty touch as they grab onto her arms, her shoulders, her back.

“You did it!” someone says. “Charlie, you beautiful fucker, you _did_ it!”

“Kendra helped,” she says, slightly dazed, and Kendra laughs and tightens her grip on Charlie’s side.

One by one, they break away, trotting back to their kickoff positions with their heads held high. Charlie joins them, snapping back into focus. For the next three minutes, there can’t be action on their half.

And for all that the Red Stars fight, there’s not. What little touches they take quickly get undone by fierce defense and fast interception. Invigorated, the Pride control the ball, passing to each other and pushing it hard past the centerline.

The final whistles shrieks.

The match ends.

Giddiness floods Charlie’s whole body, electric and loud. She grins so hard she thinks her teeth might fall out, which she wouldn’t even mind because _fuck._ They _won._ They won the whole fucking thing and bloody fucking _hell_.

She turns to try and join the inevitable team celebration, to see Astra, to share this moment _with Astra_ , when a tall figure charges towards her and catches her straight around the middle. Charlie lets out a small surprised _oomf_ as the wind gets knocked out of her. And then hands cup her cheeks, possessive and a little bit too hard, and Astra’s lips are pressing against hers.

Astra Logue kisses her. She snogs her right there, smack in the middle of a stadium full of onlookers, at the most viewed NWSL match of the season. If Charlie had thought she’d known what giddiness felt like thirty seconds ago, that has nothing on this.

Ignoring the hooting and hollering of her teammates, Charlie wraps an arm around her neck and kisses back.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! <33


End file.
